Kujaku Mai listened to the voicemail once as she applied a bold shade of matte heather grey lipstick before her golden reflection. She tamed an errant curl with expert, practised grace, and did not pause as the ghost of her ex-boyfriend called her a bitch. She approved her perfect lashes, the hang of her heavy fringe, the high press of her chest and did not blink as the voicemail rambled on.

'You cheated your way into Duellist Kingdom, bet you fucked your way into Battle City.'

As it beeped off, she spared the view a final glance. This suite was on the west side of the Ume hotel and allowed a vast, amber vista of spinal skyscrapers, the ocean, the distant sunset. Kaiba spared no expense. With the city sprawling below her, she remembered the blimp. She remembered the wind, the taste of salt in the air, and she remembered the sand covering her face... It had taken months to get over the newfound fear of heights.

Mai picked up the phone from the bed, her keys, the lipstick, and stowed them in a violet purse. She shrugged on a white suede jacket and, satisfied she had forgotten nothing, left the hotel room. At the restaurant off the hotel lobby, she asked of the waiter where her guest could be found and was led towards the back of a restaurant that was all dim golds and table linen like the first snow. She was led to the best table, of course, as if she had expected anything else.

She approached, smiling like phosphorescence. 'Kaiba.' She offered her hand and Kaiba grasped it politely.

'Kujaku.'

'Aren't we formal?' She took a seat and rested her face on one hand. The candlelight breathed gently along her neck and collar, and the flame caught the darkness in her eyes. She thought about how much older Kaiba looked and how he wasn't using the right shade of concealer to cover the dark circles under his eyes. 'It feels like so long since I saw you.'

'I saw you before the finals. You were unconscious.'

Mai wondered if this was how Kaiba always spoke to people, if the corporate meetings high up in that tower were comprised of these awkward, prideful interjections. He reminded her of celebrities she had met when touring Hollywood, the peak of the A-list who no longer knew how to treat people like human beings. They'd just forgotten how. She kept her five-star smile hitched high.

'So. What occasion caused you to summon me here like this? Business or pleasure?'

'Business.'

Mai winked at him. 'And here I thought it might be a romantic proposition.'

Kaiba seemed unsure if this was a joke. 'No. Of course not.'

The waiter appeared, uncalled, bringing a strawberry daiquiri and a whiskey. Mai accepted the daiquiri and wondered if Kaiba had, before her arrival, inputted Kujaku Mai alcohol into his phone and brought up an interview she'd done two months ago for Heart/Club magazine.

'And what's your favourite food? Your favourite drink?'

Kujaku Mai puts a perfectly manicured finger to her chin in contemplation.

'Matcha buttercream cake, and strawberry daiquiris.'

She preferred dry vodka, always had, ever since she'd got her first fake ID and started working for the casino cruise at age fifteen. But her publicist had advised against that answer. 'You're going to be thirty soon,' he had told her through a haze of smoke. 'Act like you're 22 as long as you can get away with it, because the moment you can't, your career is over.'

Mai chased the slice of lemon around the rim of the glass. She needed a new publicist. She looked over at Kaiba, cradling his whiskey and looking at it with cool apathy, and she wondered if that was the drink he would have ordered if he were alone.

Jounouchi had once ordered absinthe to try to impress her. He'd thrown up on her car's cream leather interior. She didn't have the heart to tell him absinthe wasn't even a "guy" drink.

'I apologise if I misled you,' Kaiba said after a few moments, though there was no sincerity to his voice. 'I have a legal issue to settle.'

'Oh?' Mai wondered if someone was belatedly suing him over the lack of Battle City safety regulations. She could get in on that suit. The publicity would be useful, and she could always use the extra cash. She wondered if she should give modelling another shot.

Focus.

Mai shook herself and smiled her best, camera-happy smile. 'Do tell, then.'

Kaiba sipped once from the whiskey, frowned, sipped again, cleared his throat, then extracted his phone from his breast pocket. He hit some buttons and then pushed it across the table. Mai read the screen with polite curiosity.

Jounouchi Katsuya

Hey asshole. If you find a spare moment when you're not reliving murdering your dad, could you let me know how many women you made fuck you in order to duel in BC? Aside from Kujaku I mean.

Mai leaned back. 'Is that it?'

'Yes.' Kaiba retrieved the phone. 'I apologise for the vulgarity.'

Mai watched him with careful, bright eyes. 'Kaiba, did you call me out here because Jounouchi sent you a mean text about me?'

'It's libel. It accuses you and me of illegal contact. We're both implicated.' Kaiba's upper lip curled back in a small, mad snarl. 'I contacted my lawyers, of course. They'll want to meet with you. I thought it would be prudent if we met in a more civil arena first. It would be useful to me to know how you wish to proceed.'

Mai inhaled once, then let her shoulders slump. 'Oh, Kaiba.' She felt a painful little bubble of laughter go through her. 'Sweetie, is this the first time someone has sent you something like this? It can't be, come on.'

Kaiba was too caught off guard to hide his indignation. 'It's libel, Kujaku. Jounouchi might be a bottom-feeder duellist, but his name still commands recognition in some circles. I will not allow this kind of disrespect. It's professionally damaging.'

Mai drained her drink, snapped her fingers, and was brought another. She was still the kind of person who could do that. 'Kaiba, honey, it's a text. Do you know how many messages like this I get every day? How many men accuse me of fucking my way into professional duelling? If I tried to prosecute every one of those I'd never do anything else. I can't believe this is the first time this has happened to you.'

'It's not. But…' Kaiba breathed out once, hard. His right forefinger was tapping on the table like a drowning fly. 'This is unacceptable from Jounouchi.'

'I see.' Mai hoped that they would be eating dinner, and she hoped that Kaiba intended to pay for it. God, she was so fucking sick of salads and spinach and under-300-calorie breakfast smoothies. 'So you called me here to complain about Jounouchi. That makes more sense.'

'Do you not think this is serious?'

'No, no I don't. Besides, I already knew about this. Jounouchi phoned me yesterday.'

'He did? What did he say?' There was an edge of anger and unashamed curiosity in his voice.

'About the same as the contents of the text.' She smiled, the smile of someone whose flowers were full of aphids. 'He asked if I had slept with you to get into Battle City.' Kaiba's eyes widened. He looked terrified. Mai laughed. 'He also called me a bitch.'

'That's despicable.'

'Oh, Kaiba. I get called a bitch a dozen times a day. You have to not care about these things.' Her hand went to her €1,000 Parisian purse and she removed her phone. She hit some keys. 'Look, here is what you get if you search for our names on duelling comment sites.' Her eyebrows twitched as she read. 'This one. "Kujaku was a prostitute to Crawford and then Kaiba. Women duellists are a joke." Then someone replies, "Kujaku must have a fetish for converting faggots."' She hit some more buttons. 'This thread speculates about whether or not I'm actually a man and if you're a lesbian.' She replaced the phone. 'Who cares what these idiots think?'

Kaiba's mouth was a thin, pale line. 'I expect better of professional duellists.'

'Is Jounouchi even ranked any more?'

'Seven hundred and twenty eighth worldwide,' said Kaiba instantly.

'Of course. And that is nothing. Irrelevant.' She smiled, sad and soft. 'He's just a dumb kid. Don't worry about him.'

Kaiba still wasn't looking at her. His attention was fixed on something distant and elsewhere.

'Have you spoken to Yuugi lately?'

'No. Not for years.'

'I see.' And he stood, with such abruptness Mai briefly wondered if a shot or an alarm had gone off somewhere. 'Thank you for your time. They will bill my account for the drinks.'

'That's it, then,' said Mai. It wasn't a question. Kaiba lingered at the table for a moment, his eyes once again looking elsewhere, looking at someone or something that was either yet to come or had long since left. 'Kaiba, I mean it. Don't worry about Jounouchi. Move on.'

He didn't even bother to answer her. He left, and Mai watched him leave, and then Mai ordered a quadruple vodka on Kaiba's dime and tried to take her own advice.

The cafe was full of bodies and voices, and the black coffee between his palms was growing cold. Jounouchi picked up a third packet of sugar and chewed on its serrated edge, feeling the paper stiffness give way to damp, and then he chewed it open and emptied it into the cup. It dissolved smoothly. He tried to catalogue his headache: hangover, caffeine withdrawal, stress, maybe sickness. The coffee would help, but he let it grow more and more tepid. Someone nearby was talking about his wife, whom he hated, and someone else was talking about a dog that had died next to his apartment block, and someone else was speaking Mandarin. The noise was warm like sand around him. His gums hurt.

Last night's party had been bad. Ambulance for one of the women. He didn't know her name. It could have been the coke or it could have been something else she took. It could have been anything. She had looked so strange, unconscious, her mouth open in an ugly, blurry way that you never saw when beautiful women passed out in the movies.

His phone was black and silent on the table beside him. Mai had not acknowledged the voicemail. Kaiba had not replied. He had heard nothing from either of them, from anyone, in a week.

He was a fuck up. He'd known that a long time. His dad would say it a lot, and it wasn't true, not for the reasons the man said, but yet it really was true. He fucked up everything. He hadn't wanted to hurt Mai (but he had wanted to, he had wanted it so much) and he had wanted to hurt Kaiba, and now it was all fucked. He should have kept his mouth shut and put his fist through Kaiba's face.

'Fucking shit,' he whispered to himself, then flicked through his phone to Takeda's number. He wanted reassurance. He wanted absolution.

Woman taken to hospital last night. Possible OD. What do I do?

At ten AM on a Monday, Jounouchi didn't expect to get an answer. He hadn't slept himself, and Takeda slept only odd hours; he lived off smoke and the sallow meat on his woodwormed bones. But the reply was immediate.

nothing. business as usual. see you later

This wasn't, Jounouchi knew, the correct answer.

He thought about who else he could call. There was no one he could bother with something like this. Yuugi would be horrified, would look at him with fear and pity at what he had maybe done. Honda wouldn't get involved. He would look at his baby girl, that unblemished perfect creature, and know that Jounouchi's life in all its miseries was something he had to keep far away from her.

For the briefest of moments, Jounouchi wanted to call his mother. She would probably hang up on him. He didn't even know her current number.

He could go back to Kaiba. God, the thought sickened him. Just go crawling back and say Hey, loser, guess what? I'm just as pathetic and useless as you are. I might have killed a woman! Didn't you used to make weapons? Maybe if I sell a few more kilos I can start to catch up to your death toll!

He wondered if Kaiba would answer if he called. He had ignored the text, why would he want to have any further contact with Jounouchi? Not that Jounouchi wanted any further contact with him. Not that Jounouchi could ever be that desperate for the parody of friendly interaction.

He looked to the bleary, unnecessary plastic clock face on the cafe wall. He could go back to his apartment, sleep for six hours, then head out again to meet Takeda and drop off the cash. And the coke he hadn't managed to sell. How much was left? Too much, probably. He'd bailed before the ambulance arrived.

Had someone even called an ambulance?

They must have, if she was rich. They didn't let rich people die of overdoses anymore. That would be unfashionable. But maybe she wasn't rich. It hadn't been a nanbawan party, it was just a gathering of some mid-to-upper level salarymen. What if she was a hooker? They would have dumped her off the docks. It was dark down there under the water, and so quiet, he remembered.

He tried to drag his thoughts back to work. If he could just stop thinking about her open mouth. Slack, sagging, like his dad's had been when he ODed, lying there on the bathroom floor. His dad had drooled up spittle all over his chin and through his five-day stubble.

Work. How much was left in the bag? He swirled the coffee around his hands and considered. He had managed to unload maybe half of it. This party hadn't been the pay-in-advance kind, he had charged by the transaction. He was definitely short.

Jounouchi gulped down the cold coffee and pushed through to the shitty cafe bathroom. People threw him dirty looks, but he had long grown used to that. He locked himself in the stall, kicked down the toilet lid, sat, and pulled out two parcels: the envelope of cash in his left pocket and the plastic bag in his right. He rifled through the cash. A little over three hundred thousand. Way short. He definitely didn't have the money to bring it up to the round five he needed.

There was no way he could sell ¥200,000 of coke in eight hours without a lead. Impossible. He didn't know anyone who could even afford a gram. If he hit up all the places he knew, then maybe he could unload ¥50,000. If he got lucky. That still put him hopelessly short. Maybe Takeda would let it slide, just this once.

Jounouchi massaged the fine white stuff through the film. If he did it all at once, it would probably be a quick death. Better he took it than he tried to sell it to the street kids that slunk around his old haunts. Better for everyone.

Jounouchi raked his hand through his hair. Those were three bad options. Turn up to Takeda short, sell as much as he could in the next few hours, or just kill himself right here.

You're not going to kill yourself. Don't be a fucking idiot. You're too much of a coward anyway.

He pushed the thought away. He needed to find some other way to sell it, or otherwise to come up with the 200k. If only he hadn't spent most of the cash from selling Kaiba's TV. There was some left, maybe one hundred if he was lucky, so if he sold fifty's worth—

Just sell the coke to Kaiba.

That wasn't so much two birds, one stone but rather a whole fucking flock with one pebble. He'd have the money, Kaiba would be high and happy and maybe dead, he'd still have a job, Takeda would stop whining to him about trying to get a hook up with Kaiba...

Yuugi would look at him with such piteous sadness for doing something like that. But Yuugi wasn't around any more. Yuugi didn't matter.

Jounouchi's head pounded like gravel in a tin can.

He did one line, unlocked the stall, stared at the eyes of his reflection like it was somebody else, then left the cafe and aimed to pavement-pound the four miles to the business district. He would go right up to the Kaiba Corp. desk. He would demand to see him. He wouldn't make up excuses, he wouldn't lie, he would simply be Jounouchi Katsuya — the Jounouchi Katsuya, Battle City finalist! — and they would let him up. He could make it. He was no one's stray dog. He could do anything.

'Is Kaiba in?'

The receptionist regarded him with disinterested eyes. 'Excuse me?'

Jounouchi tapped his finger rapidly on the table.'Kaiba Seto. The CEO. Is he in?'

The receptionist leaned slowly back from the desk, putting a couple more inches between him and Jounouchi. He had a sardonic, bored face, as though Jounouchi's existence were an affront to him. Another receptionist beside him glanced up from her computer, eavesdropping with a total lack of stealth.

'I cannot disclose that information.'

'Just fucking tell me if he's in.'

The first receptionist's eyebrows twitched. The second bit her lip. Jounouchi met her eyes steady and hard. She wasn't great-looking, kind of buck-toothed. She could have been halfway to cute if she put any effort into her hair and make-up. Her lipstick was a stupid shade of pink, the kind dumb schoolgirls pick out when they want to look grown up.

The first receptionist picked up the phone. 'Would you like me to call security, sir?'

Jounouchi wanted to spit. 'Call him. Call Kaiba, tell him Jounouchi is in the lobby. Jounouchi. He wants to see me.'

'You have an appointment?' The scepticism was like a clarion bell ringing from the man's mouth.

'No, I don't have an appointment. But he will want to see me. I have something for him.'

The receptionist hit a key on the phone-pad. 'I am calling security now.'

'God damn, can you just call Kaiba? Do you not have clearance for that or something?'

'Ah—' The female receptionist tried weakly to get her colleague's attention. 'Kishitani-san, I think that's Jounouchi Katsuya. The duellist, you know.'

Jounouchi looked at her with surprise. It had been some time since someone recognised him for his stale duelling fame. He supposed hearing his name must have helped. He tried to beat down the coke-angry hammering of his heart and smiled in a way that might have once come across as winsome. Those smiles had unlocked doors for him when he was a kid, all bright and puppy dog-ish, but now he felt the grin spread across his lips and thought he must look just like Takeda. Just like a leering old man.

'That's me, the one and only.'

He became suddenly aware of two men in heavy suits behind him. Maybe it was the boredom or maybe it was the coke or maybe it was the high of being recognised by an almost-cute-girl, but they instilled in him no anxiety.

'Hold on,' said the receptionist. He took his colleague by the arm and led her aside, and the two spoke quietly to one another. Jounouchi could tell by the way he gripped her arm that he was her superior and that he didn't respect her, and that he probably grabbed a lot of girls like that. He sort of wanted to hit the guy. You didn't just grab girls and drag them around. He had never done that to Mai. She had slapped him, once. It hadn't hurt. He was sure he had deserved it.

The two receptionists came back over. Jounouchi smiled again at the girl and she looked away blushing. He felt almost warm inside at that. The first receptionist picked up the phone and dialled something.

'There is a young man claiming to be a Jounouchi Katsuya in the lobby requesting an immediate appointment with Kaiba-sama.'

Jounouchi couldn't hear what was said at the other end of the line. The receptionist didn't say anything further to the person on the other end, but he listened for what must have been a full minute. Jounouchi amused himself by looking at the girl. She had a name-tag but it was obscured by her hair. Her breasts were big and full beneath the cheap white business shirt. He should say something cool and witty about not being able to read her name tag, but he couldn't think of anything, even with the coke.

The receptionist hung up. 'One moment, sir.' He looked to the two security guards. 'It's alright, gentlemen. Thank you for coming.'

Jounouchi and the receptionists stood in silence for another long time. Gracelessly, Jounouchi leaned on the counter, the dirty folds of his jacket getting grease on some stupid paperwork that lay on top. He looked at the girl. 'So you're into duel monsters?'

She blushed again and avoided his eyes. It was an ugly kind of shyness. 'Ah, only a little. I watched the Kaiba Corporation tournaments.'

'I did okay in those,' he said with mock humility. 'You play at all yourself?'

'Oh no. I'd be no good. It's too complicated.'

'Eh, nonsense. I'm sure you'd learn in no time. I could teach you.' God, these were some bad lines. The male receptionist stood between them with an expression like he could smell something foul. The girl giggled. Jounouchi started to feel sort of bad for her, and then he felt bad for himself. This was embarrassing.

He was saved from further self-flagellation by a sudden, impossibly deep voice behind him.

'Here to collect.'

Jounouchi jumped, startled. Beside him stood a massive man, three hundred pounds of muscle in a bespoke charcoal suit. His hair was long and glossy black, tied in a topknot, and his huge face wore a thick, expensively-styled beard. He looked down at Jounouchi from about two feet of height above him.

'Jounouchi Katsuya. Good to see you again. Let's get moving.'

Jounouchi couldn't place him. He was sure he hadn't met the man before, but when the man started walking towards the elevators he half-jogged to keep up. They skirted the regular elevators, opening and closing constantly as employees were whisked up the metal spine of KaibaCorp., and stopped at a flat metal panel Jounouchi hadn't even identified as an elevator at first. It had no buttons. The huge man swiped a card through a reader beside it and the doors slid open. They entered. The lights in here were dim, the walls suede, the carpet thick. As the doors closed silence settled around them. This elevator was perfectly soundproofed.

Jounouchi continued to stare at the man without really being aware that he was doing so. Inside the quiet of the elevator, the man seemed even bigger somehow.

'You were outside Kaiba-sama's car,' the man explained, sensing Jounouchi's confusion. 'At the hotel. Few weeks ago. I was driving. You grabbed the car door and I was going to break your fingers.' He said this brightly, conversationally, not with any intent to intimidate.

Jounouchi's brain felt like it was rolling around his skull. How high was he? Who was this man?

And then it came to him. Kaiba's chauffeur. The name escaped him.

'Kaoru,' the man supplied as though reading his mind again. 'Gotta say, I don't see a lot of people speak to Kaiba-sama the way you did. I've been working for him for about five years now and I've never seen you before, so I doubt you guys are good friends.' He wiggled his eyebrows. 'You wanting a revenge match against him or something? I guess you were a duellist back in the day.'

Jounouchi finally found his voice. 'Ah, something like that. We were in high school together.'

'Oh yeah?' Kaoru chuckled, shook his head, looked to the ceiling. His voice was thick dark syrup. 'Kaiba-sama in school. That must have been a scream.'

The elevator chimed softly, then the doors opened. They were in a bright white corridor with a single desk. There was a waiting area and a single big green plastic plant, but it was otherwise a totally sparse space. There were no windows.

They approached the desk. It was manned by a receptionist who was probably paid a lot more than the ones they had met in the lobby. This man was, Jounouchi guessed, west Asian and wore a striking dark green blazer with velvet lapels. He looked Jounouchi over with a countenance of mild assessment, then looked to Kaoru, sharing some private information with his gaze.

'One Jounouchi Katsuya,' Kaoru announced. The receptionist looked at Jounouchi again, thoughtfully. He then pressed a button on the desk with unusual delicacy. His fingernails were strikingly manicured,

'Jounouchi Katsuya to see you.' His voice was soft.

'Send him in.' Kaiba's voice came tinny out of the desk speaker.

The receptionist nodded towards the pale double doors beside him. 'Go right in.' There was something strange in his expression, though Jounouchi had no idea what it was. Something hostile. The hostility of this receptionist and the amusement of Kaoru chimed together somehow, but he had no idea why or what it meant.

Jounouchi pushed open the doors.

The office was familiar. He had seen it before in magazines, news segments, articles on the internet. Most of Kaiba's press interaction was given here, as though he couldn't be bothered any more to travel to meet journalists. The room was white, empty, sterile. White carpets, a white desk, white handle-less doors and panels lining the walls in which Jounouchi assumed paperwork had to be kept, because there was no other evidence of it. One large off-white corner sofa in suede sat in the middle of the room. One wall was floor-to-ceiling windows and Jounouchi could distantly glimpse ocean shimmers. They were eighty-something floors up. Kind of beautiful, kind of terrifying.

And there was Kaiba. He sat with his back to the windows, typing at a slim laptop, not looking up. He wore a steel blue blazer and white shirt, though no tie. Today, in this professional environment, he looked stunningly unremarkable. He could have been any other well-to-do young salaryman.

'I assume you've come to apologise.' Kaiba typed some more. Jounouchi wondered how much of his attention was truly absorbed by the computer screen and how much of it was pretense.

Jounouchi did want to apologise. Not to Kaiba — God, who could possibly care — but to Mai. She deserved so much better than him. If that bridge hadn't been burned already, he'd well and truly turned it to ashes now. It was over. Mai was just a beautiful ghost to him now, waving from far away, shrinking over some horizon.

Over over over...

But Kaiba wasn't done with him. The girl he loved so much it made his teeth hurt moved through her life without thought or memory of him, but Kaiba was still here.

Jounouchi wedged his hands into his pockets. If he said sorry, maybe they could start fresh. Maybe they could talk like friends, or at least polite acquaintances. Maybe he could sell Kaiba the coke and go back to Takeda heavy for the week. Maybe Kaiba would kill himself and Yuugi would find out what happened and the pity would fill his eyes like sweet rice wine...

No.

'No, I'm not here to apologise. Why would you think a dumb thing like that?' He forced a snort of fake laughter out of himself. 'Thought I'd come by to pick up an apology from you for how you spoke to me the other day.'

Kaiba paused his typing. He looked at Jounouchi as though there were something faint about him, as though Kaiba's eyes couldn't quite focus. Then a clarity snapped into place.

'Don't be absurd. Get out of my office if that's what you're here for.'

Kaiba resumed his typing. But he didn't call security. Jounouchi waited for Kaiba to raise his hand, flick that button under his desk, turn back to his work as though none of it mattered to him at all — but he didn't. Kaiba typed, and Jounouchi stood and watched, and Kaiba typed, and the cocaine edge dulled and Jounouchi realised almost a full minute had passed and nothing had happened. The silence was a dare: do something, do something before I call them, do it, do it!

But Jounouchi did nothing, and nothing happened. Kaiba typed, he occasionally paused and clicked the mouse, then he typed some more. The silence lazily unwound like a cat and began gently padding around the room.

Chicken.

They used to play that, he and Honda, when they were kids. Run out into the road when a car was coming, whoever ran back first was the loser. The asphalt always smelled strong, the sunlight glinted off the broken glass, the drivers would yell you dumb fucking kids or get out of the way, god! or sometimes worse things. Wait until the car almost hit you, then run back to the pavement. Whoever did the sensible thing lost the game.

God, how Kaiba liked his games.

Yeah, okay. Let's play.

Jounouchi went to the couch and threw himself down on it. He let his shoes with their rubber filth soles and stepped-in-gum rest on the virgin suede. He heard Kaiba pause in his typing, but perhaps he was only pausing to read something.

Staring up at the ceiling, Jounouchi took notice of the overhead lights. They were a harsh white, not the dim yellows of the diners and shitty apartments and bars he knew so well. This is what it was to be rich. You were lit differently. The cuts on your skin cast different shadows.

Jounouchi closed his eyes to block out the light. He had been awake almost twenty-four hours. Not unusual for him. Not so unusual. Not so difficult. He couldn't sleep in his apartment anyway with the noise.

The typing continued.

Jounouchi had been so good at winning chicken. Honda always bailed at the last second. Once a car had hit Jounouchi, just grazed him, and it had hurt a bit but not really, and he could hear the engine drilling away the way he could hear Kaiba's typing, or the way the rain used to sound on the ceiling when he slept at Yuugi's, when they stayed up all night, years ago in middle school, and Jounouchi always had homework he hadn't done...

Jounouchi woke with a jolt.

'I said I'm leaving now.' Kaiba stood above him, looming, looking down, his eyes flat. 'It's late. I'm going home. You need to leave as well.'

Jounouchi blinked. 'Whatthefuck?' he slurred. He swallowed. The lights above him burned his eyes. Outside, the sun had set. The day had disappeared in an instant. 'Kaiba?'

'Get out of my office.' Kaiba said this without reproach. He was probably used to people doing exactly what he wanted as soon as, or even before, he said it.

Jounouchi stared up at that weird blank face. 'Chicken.' The word came to him from far away, washed up on the shore of his consciousness.

Kaiba stared down at him. 'What?'

'You lost the game.' Jounouchi rubbed his eyes. God, he needed coffee. He flicked on his phone and saw, with no surprise, eleven missed calls from Takeda. Jounouchi ground his fingers into his eyelids until he saw stars. 'Dammit. I'm sorry about the text. I'm really fucking sorry.' Kaiba said nothing. The apology wasn't for Kaiba, it was for Mai. But she wasn't here. She would never be near him again. He'd never smell her pink champagne smell again. Instead he had Kaiba. 'Dammit,' he said again. 'I think a woman might have died last night. Overdose.' He kept rubbing eyes longer than he needed to so to avoid meeting Kaiba's gaze, but eventually he had to look up. There was no judgment in Kaiba's face. If this news surprised or shocked him, there was no indication.

'You dealt to her?'

'Yeah. Maybe. I don't know if I should get a lawyer.'

'Can you afford a lawyer?' The question was an insult, a joke. The familiarity of such insults was weirdly comforting.

'Nope.' He let his arms drop to his sides. The sleep had helped. He felt a little more whole. Takeda and money and his rent felt very far away right now. 'You could hire one for me.'

'Why on earth would I do that?'

Jounouchi shrugged. 'You could do it out of the kindness of your heart.'

Kaiba seemed unsure if this was a joke.

'Forget about it.' Jounouchi tried to sit up, then thought better of it. 'Fuck. It wasn't a coke overdose, I didn't sell her that much. And she was fine, before... You know, before. So it must have been something else. Maybe a speedball. Or it could be the coke was cut with something poisonous.'

Kaiba's expression was impossible to read. There might have been, somewhere deep in there, some grain of curiosity.

'Do you have some on you?'

'Of course I don't—' Jounouchi began. Of course I don't have any on me. How stupid do you think I am? And then he felt the weight in his pocket. He hadn't even been home. He hadn't changed his clothes. He had hiked around Domino with thirty grams of cocaine in his jacket pocket. He breathed out once, slowly. 'Yeah, I do.'

'I can test it.' Kaiba held out his hand.

'Why would you do that?'

'You sold to my associate and you tried to sell to me. If you've been selling coke cut with rat poison to people in my professional circle, then I would like to know about it.' Kaiba said this levelly, but it hit Jounouchi's ears with a metallic screech of inauthenticity. He filed that thought away.

'And if it is cut with something bad?'

'I'll call the police.'

Jounouchi considered. 'Not much motivation for me to let you to test it, then.'

'You get peace of mind.' The slightest hint of a frown crossed Kaiba's brow, and once again it seemed he was distracted by something not in the room with them. 'That's what you're looking for, yes?'

Jounouchi sighed: long, low, like if he could just breathe out deep enough and long enough he could exhale all the shit and shame he had been carrying around inside him for the past so many years.

He handed Kaiba the bag, and Kaiba took it.